Saturday, May 05, 2007

In typical Beer Bike fashion, it was POURING on Saturday morning when I, armed with a delicious egg-and-cheese kolache, drove to the stadium. I knew I was early, but I didn't think I was that early - there couldn't have been more than 5 people in the entire track. Just as I was really getting confused, Felicia called to inform me that the event had been postponed! There was an unexplained death on campus the night before (I know what you're thinking, but as far as I know it wasn't alcohol-related), and the college coordinators decided it wasn't appropriate to be happy on that day. Not to sound insensitive, but the college coordinators didn't consider the alums who had paid thousands of dollars to travel to Texas and see their old friends. So we got crap for our dinero.

I was about to propose an alternative alumni meeting when Felicia informed me that alums were meeting up at Valhalla, a curious place for an alumni meeting seeing as it is a grad student bar (grads and undergrads have never really gotten along, mainly on account of the fact that they can't agree on who is weirder).

It stopped raining just as I was heading over there. Also, I was lucky enough to run into a handful of folks I knew. Check the photos:

Here is Kevin, just about to complete his MSME at Rice (and totally smokin' to boot); me; Suzy, forensic accountant in Houston; and Keedy, who is a test engineer in San Antonio (also totally smokin', as always) - go ahead, ask him what he does for a living, it's too gross for me to tell you! Everyone's doing fabulous!

Here we have me again; Evan, who is wildly successful at I can't remember what (and smokin') and who is cool enough to have a blackberry; Keedy again; and Uchenna, who also just graduated from medical school. They are also fabulous (see a pattern here?). She asked me to put these photos up on facebook right away and I am taking waay too long to do it.

Which reminds me, folks -I learned during my travel that anyone who is anyone is now a member of FACEBOOK. So go join and find out the rest of the story on these guys!

After that we hung for a while at Woodstock's in the Village, I went on one final run to Taco Cabana with Max (God Bless TC), then I had to head to the airport for an early Sunday morning flight.

So that concludes my Texas Tour, folks. It served to support my theory: for the first few years after graduating from college, most people's lives are shit for a while as they cast about trying to make life match their expectations. Then, after a few years, things finally settle out, the torture of grad/med school ends, first jobs either work out or they don't and lead to better ones, new friends are made, and people can be happy again. Look at the proof!